Unless You Repent

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Luke 13:1-9. Click here to listen to an audio version of this sermon.

"Unless you repent, you will all perish."

These surprisingly threatening words from Jesus in our Gospel this morning come in a scene where Jesus is teaching, and someone in the crowd raises a question about how to interpret something in the news, some current event. There were some Galileans, anti-Roman activists probably, insurrectionists possibly, whom Pontius Pilate had executed while they were at worship, so that their blood was mixed in with the blood of their sacrifices. To be killed while at worship would have seemed doubly disastrous to Jews of Jesus' time, so they ask him whether these Galileans were particularly bad sinners to have met with such a particularly bad end. I mean, it stands to reason, doesn't it: if God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, then if someone has bad things happen to them it means ipso facto that they're a bad person, right? If those Galileans had been repentant, good people, like us (the questioners imply) that never would have happened to them, right? That's the question the crowd puts to Jesus; and in response Jesus asks a question of his own: what about those eighteen people who died when part of the Jerusalem city wall collapsed on them near Siloam? Do you think they were worse sinners than everyone else in the city because this bad thing happened to them? Does that stand to your reason, too?, Jesus asks.

And then Jesus throws a curve: "Do you think these people who came to a bad end were worse sinners? No, I tell you, they were not." In one sentence Jesus cuts the connection the crowd is making between bad fortune and bad behavior. It is not the case that a person's inner moral life is reflected in their outer accidental happenstance, Jesus says. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. You cannot draw moral conclusions from mere chance, Jesus says. Perishing is not God's punishment for the unrepentant.

But then immediately Jesus says, "Unless you repent, you will all perish." Why? Why does Jesus say that? If Jesus has just cut the connection between bad behavior and bad ends, why does he now appear to connect them again? If it is not the case that God sends bad deaths to bad people, then why does Jesus now appear to threaten the unrepentant with perishing? Or is Jesus really saying something else?

I think the key to what Jesus is really saying is in the word itself, repent, and in the parable Jesus tells to illustrate repentance. The original Greek word we here translate as "repent" is μετανοητε, which literally means "change your mind, transform your way of thinking." What Jesus calls for here is not just feeling sorry for our sins, not just promising God we'll never do bad things again if God just gets us out of this jam — what Jesus calls for here is a deep change in the way we think, the way we assess what's really important to us, the way we make our choices about how to act and what to do, the way we direct our energies in life.

And what it means to change our thinking in this way is illustrated in the parable. There is a tree that bears no fruit. The landowner wants to cut it down: it's taking up the soil and the water and the space and giving nothing back: how can it continue? But the gardener really wants the tree to be fruitful: it is in the tree's nature to bear fruit, and the gardener wants the tree to live up to its nature: so the gardener offers to dig around the tree, aerate the soil, put on fertilizer, feed the roots — basically to do everything possible to give the tree what it needs to bear its fruit. And if it still isn't fruitful, if it still takes and takes and takes and never gives, if it still will not participate in the flow of life that makes the vineyard, well, then, it isn't fully alive anyway, and it cannot continue to live.

In this parable, repentance, metanoia, is illustrated as the change from being barren to being fruitful, the change from taking and taking and taking to participating in the exchange, in the give-and-take that makes for life. And Jesus' call to repentance is revealed to be not so much about placating the God who would strike us down, as it is about embracing the God who wants us to be fruitful, who longs to give us everything we need to grow and flourish and be co-creative with God in bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit and the works of love.

In fact, I think this little parable is a wonderful capsule summary of the whole Christian doctrine of sin and redemption. According to our teaching, God creates us for love, God brings us into being so that God can love us and we can love God and the neighbors God gives us. We are meant to live out that love by giving and receiving, by taking into ourselves what others generously offer and by offering out from ourselves what we have generated; and we are meant to do this giving and receiving in generosity and freedom and right-relationship and mutual well-being. That is God's ideal for us. But we get selfish: instead of receiving, we take; instead of giving, we keep; instead of being generous and free, we manipulate and bargain and connive and quid-pro-quo and do everything we can with strings attached for our own benefit. That is the root meaning of sin: the disorder of love that takes and keeps rather than giving and receiving in freedom and grace. That is the tree that bears no fruit. That is the way that perishes, because if you only take and keep, if you only turn in on yourself, if you refuse to participate in the flow of right-relationships and mutual well-being for too long, eventually you use yourself up, eventually there is nothing left, eventually you fade away into your own self-centered emptiness — and that is a terrible way to perish.

But God doesn't want us to perish like that. God doesn't want us to fade away into self-centered nothingness. God wants us to be fruitful in giving and receiving in generosity and freedom and love. So God sends us Jesus, who shows us what it means to live a fully human life in perfect fulfilment of the divine ideal of giving and receiving; and who not only shows us, but also calls us into relationships — relationships as disciples, relationships as brothers and sisters in Christ in Baptism — relationships where we ourselves learn how to love as Jesus loves, where we become less self-centered and more love-centered, where we are transformed in our way of thinking and choosing and acting, so that we spend less and less of our time and energy taking and keeping with strings attached, and more and more of our time and energy giving and receiving in freedom and grace. That transformation is how we are saved.

And that, I think, is the positive meaning of repentance that is the real heart of our Gospel today. When Jesus says "Unless you repent, you will perish," I really don't think he is threatening that God will execute us or make a tower fall on us or cut us down unless we say we're sorry. What I think Jesus means is the simple statement that the way of self-centeredness leads to becoming empty and trivial and perished; but if we will let God's love transform us, if we will change our thinking with God at the center, then we will grow and flourish and bear fruit of love and joy. We repent not because we are afraid of the punishment, but we repent because we long so much for the good of God.

So what does that say to you? If you think that repenting means not just telling God you're sorry, but being actively transformed for love, then where in your life might you repent right now? Is there some relationship, some habit, some pattern of behavior, some repeating loop of emotion where you feel stuck, we you are aware of taking and taking and taking, where you would like to give and receive in freedom and mutual joy instead? Is there some place where you long to be transformed in your mind so that you can be freed to love? That is where Jesus speaks to you in this Gospel today and says "Do not perish, but repent and live."

In this Lenten season of repentance, may we each hear Jesus calling to us, and may God give us each grace to respond. Amen.